第3章 THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO.(3)

The ascent was in many places difficult and dangerous.Huge fragments of rock often lay across the trail,and after a few hours'climbing they were forced to leave their mules in a little gully,and continue the ascent afoot.Unaccustomed to such exertion,Father Jose often stopped to wipe the perspiration from his thin cheeks.As the day wore on,a strange silence oppressed them.Except the occasional pattering of a squirrel,or a rustling in the chimisal bushes,there were no signs of life.The half-human print of a bear's foot sometimes appeared before them,at which Ignacio always crossed himself piously.The eye was sometimes cheated by a dripping from the rocks,which on closer inspection proved to be a resinous oily liquid with an abominable sulphurous smell.When they were within a short distance of the summit,the discreet Ignacio,selecting a sheltered nook for the camp,slipped aside and busied himself in preparations for the evening,leaving the Holy Father to continue the ascent alone.

Never was there a more thoughtless act of prudence,never a more imprudent piece of caution.Without noticing the desertion,buried in pious reflection,Father Jose pushed mechanically on,and,reaching the summit,cast himself down and gazed upon the prospect.

Below him lay a succession of valleys opening into each other like gentle lakes,until they were lost to the southward.Westerly the distant range hid the bosky canada which sheltered the mission of San Pablo.In the farther distance the Pacific Ocean stretched away,bearing a cloud of fog upon its bosom,which crept through the entrance of the bay,and rolled thickly between him and the northeastward;the same fog hid the base of mountain and the view beyond.Still,from time to time the fleecy veil parted,and timidly disclosed charming glimpses of mighty rivers,mountain defiles,and rolling plains,sear with ripened oats,and bathed in the glow of the setting sun.As Father Jose gazed,he was penetrated with a pious longing.Already his imagination,filled with enthusiastic conceptions,beheld all that vast expanse gathered under the mild sway of the Holy Faith,and peopled with zealous converts.Each little knoll in fancy became crowned with a chapel;from each dark canyon gleamed the white walls of a mission building.Growing bolder in his enthusiasm,and looking farther into futurity,he beheld a new Spain rising on these savage shores.

He already saw the spires of stately cathedrals,the domes of palaces,vineyards,gardens,and groves.Convents,half hid among the hills,peeping from plantations of branching limes;and long processions of chanting nuns wound through the defiles.So completely was the good Father's conception of the future confounded with the past,that even in their choral strain the well-remembered accents of Carmen struck his ear.He was busied in these fanciful imaginings,when suddenly over that extended prospect the faint,distant tolling of a bell rang sadly out and died.It was the Angelus.Father Jose listened with superstitious exaltation.The mission of San Pablo was far away,and the sound must have been some miraculous omen.But never before,to his enthusiastic sense,did the sweet seriousness of this angelic symbol come with such strange significance.With the last faint peal,his glowing fancy seemed to cool;the fog closed in below him,and the good Father remembered he had not had his supper.He had risen and was wrapping his serapa around him,when he perceived for the first time that he was not alone.

Nearly opposite,and where should have been the faithless Ignacio,a grave and decorous figure was seated.His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo,dressed in mourning,with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws.

The monstrous hat and prodigious feather,the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose,contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened,all belonged to a century previous.Yet Father Jose was not astonished.His adventurous life and poetic imagination,continually on the lookout for the marvellous,gave him a certain advantage over the practical and material minded.He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his visitant,and was prepared.

With equal coolness and courtesy he met the cavalier's obeisance.

"I ask your pardon,Sir Priest,"said the stranger,"for disturbing your meditations.Pleasant they must have been,and right fanciful,I imagine,when occasioned by so fair a prospect.""Worldly,perhaps,Sir Devil,--for such I take you to be,"said the Holy Father,as the stranger bowed his black plumes to the ground;"worldly,perhaps;for it hath pleased Heaven to retain even in our regenerated state much that pertaineth to the flesh,yet still,Itrust,not without some speculation for the welfare of the Holy Church.In dwelling upon yon fair expanse,mine eyes have been graciously opened with prophetic inspiration,and the promise of the heathen as an inheritance hath marvellously recurred to me.